This Week's Top 10 WaPo Sports Stories: Olyhuh?

In which we learn the answer to the question: should I, along with 12 other Washington Post employees, really be in Beijing right now? Answer? Get me on the next plane to Ashburn!

No no, I shouldn't be so cynical. The Games have hardly begun, and once the athletics ramp up, our readership is sure to follow. Meanwhile, the Redskins season has already been going on for....wait, what's that? They haven't started yet either? Oh. Right.

Well, on the bright side, Beijing has much more interesting architecture than Ashburn. Also, much more impressive smog.

(Newcomers to this blog who are only here to read about the Olympics: each Friday, I list the Top 10 sports stories and columns from our Web site over the past week, Friday through Thursday.)

This week's list:

1. The Post-Fame Celebration, by Jason Reid. Redskins game story about the team's 30-16 win over the Indianapolis Colts in the first exhibition game of the year.

4. A Gunner and a Target, by Jason Reid. Redskins feature on Jason Campbell and the pressures of being a starting quarterback in D.C.

5. Zorn Tries to Whip Rookies Into Shape, by Jason La Canfora. Redskins news story on Jim Zorn scolding rookie wide receivers Malcolm Kelly and Devin Thomas for their lack of conditioning and casting doubts on their prospects for playing time.

UMD, I was hoping you agreeing with me would become a trend but I guess not. I thought Jenkins' column was over the top and really not too well supported. Her whole argument against "corporatism" was a bit strange considering the communist setting.

I like her other columns usually, but this one had such an angry tone and was really off putting.

Boggy Man - still say it'd be interesting to see if the hits by registered WaPo.com users can be broken down by zip code. My theory is the football team is of national interest and this is the paper in town of national prominence, therefore you might get a heavier % of hits for team Snyder from the out-of towners than the locals. No doubt the Snydermen dominate locally, too, but I'm curious about whether the % from the out of towners differ from what the local hit % is.

@ JDP. I don't necessarily disagree with you about the angry tone. But remember the context in which she wrote that column: from behind China's version of the Iron Curtain. She's daring the Chinese authorities to censor her. I don't know if she's angry as much as she's trying to poke /provoke the Chinese. When she writes about the corporate sponsors who "acquiesced to the Chinese government's crackdown, and effectively accepted the censorship of the press during these Games, [and] fell into a special category of profiteers that Franklin Delano Roosevelt described in his "Four Freedoms" speech," I figured she's be deported quicker than you could say Jorge Julio.

I'm kind of surprised that of the Redskins stories featured, only one of them had to do with Monk and Green in the Hall of Fame--when there were at least three other columns about that and a news story. I would think most Redskins fans would--and should--be a lot more interested in that that a story about a game where the starters played about a minute and a half. I'm not sure what that means. Does it mean many Redkins fan Internet readers are younger and don't remember much about Monk and Green? Does it mean Redskins fans are a little too excited about preseason games?

Or it could just mean that stories that come out on the weekend just don't get as many hits as those during the week because people aren't at work wasting time. Which adds somewhat of a new dimension to interpreting these rankings.

I think the Redskins have assembled a large offshore team of nimble-fingered children to sit at cheap computers and hit the web browser's refresh button all day and night in exchange for partial tins of mud carp and a few grains of rice.